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This section was my workspace for philosophy essays between July 2006 and April 2008.
I call this "Prehistoric Kilroy" because it gave me practice for more
disciplined essays in Kilroy Cafe.Also see my philophical blog and Twitter feed.

Issue #70, 1/18/2007

Drug-Induced Personality Change

By Glenn CampbellFamily Court Philosopher

Do you remember Otis? He was the affable drunk on The
Andy Griffith Show who was courteous enough to report to
the police station every night and lock himself into his own
holding cell. Otis reinforced the public image of drunks as
likeable, funny people.

Today, we would call Otis a "substance abuser," and we would
recognize that his behavior is destructive, not funny. Yes,
people become goofy when drunk, but they can also become
violent and can sabotage themselves in remarkably insane
ways that they wouldn't even think of when sober. Even when
they are sober, their personality changes. It isn't just a
matter of experiencing a temporary insanity when they are
intoxicated. They also experience a different kind of insanity
when they are not.

Drug abuse has two kinds of psychological effects. One is
the brain dysfunction that occurs directly as a result of
the drugs themselves. When people are "on" drugs or "coming
down" from drugs, they can do some crazy things because the
drug interferes with their thinking processes and impulse
control. Jeremy Strohmeyer, who molested and murdered a
7-year-old girl in a casino restroom in 1997, was said to
have been high on meth at the time. No matter how depraved an
individual may be, they just aren't going to do something
this stupid when they're not high.

I call these the "chemical" effects of the drug. This is the
physical influence that the drug has on the brain and on
resulting behavior. Different drugs tend to have different
behavioral effects. Cocaine and meth tend to make you
paranoid, while booze and pot tend to make you goofy.
Jeremy Strohmeyer probably wouldn't have killed the girl if
he had been smoking pot, but he might have bored her to
death with folk songs.

There are a whole different set of psychological effects
when the abuser is not high. I call these the "existential"
effects. These are the various excuses, justifications,
evasions and denials that the abuser uses to support his
disease. They are pretty much the same regardless of
the substance you are addicted to, be it meth, pot,
cigarettes, caffeine or romance novels.

The drug has a physical hold on the brain, but it is in the
nature of the addict to invent a reason for his drug use
other than addiction. Take something as simple as caffeine.
Million of people drink coffee every day because their brains are
addicted to the caffeine it contains. Do they see
themselves as addicts? No, because they have built this
whole elaborate ritual around it. They don't just pop a
caffeine pill every day. They go to Starbucks and get a $4
latte. It easier to ignore your addiction and accept no
fault for it when you have surrounded it with so much
culture.

If you try to cut a coffee drinker off from his morning
fix, he's going to lash out at you. It is not that he is
addicted, in his view, but you are interfering with his
culture and his "morning ritual."

The people who become addicts have a certain personality to
begin with. They tend to be more at the "feeling" end of
the spectrum rather than the "thinking" end. The fact that
they became addicted indicates that they are the sort of
folks who will let feelings take them over, even when facts
tell them something different. "Feeling" people are very
emotional but don't usually perceive their emotion as coming
from inside them. In their view, everything they feel can
be explained by events in the outside world.

The hunger for drugs is an emotion that just "happens."
It is chemically based within the brain, and there is no
real reason for it in the outside world. Nonetheless, the
addict is going to look for a reason. If he feels the urge
to drink, it can't be something inside him that is
generating the urge. Instead, he thinks he is drinking in
response to something that happened to him, like some
stress or injustice. His wife drove him to drink, or he is
drinking because he had a bad day at the office. There
always has to be an excuse, because if there isn't one, then
he has to accept his own internal blame and responsibility.

These excuses can grow upon each other and reinforce each
other until ones entire personality changes. Someone who
you once trusted can become a total shitheal when addicted.
They will steal, lie and betray their friends to support
their habit and be totally unapologetic about it.

This is perhaps the most dangerous thing about drug
addiction: not what the addict is going to do when he is high,
but what he will do before he gets high, when the urge takes
them over and his morality goes out the window. That's
when people rob convenience stores. When people are high,
they are just crazy, but when they are trying to get high or
to hide their addiction, they can be deceptive,
goal-directed, manipulative and mean.

Have you ever had a smoker friend give you his cigarettes
and tell you he is quitting? "Don't give these back to me,"
he says. "No matter how I beg or plead, don't let me have
another cigarette." You're a sucker if you agree. You should
never put yourself in that position, because when he
needs a cigarette, he needs one, and if you stand in his
way, you are going to be crushed and in some way blamed.

Short of locking him up in prison, you are never going to
make an addict quit from the outside. As the conventional
wisdom says, he has to want to quit. He has to come
to a stable resolution within himself that the addiction is
his own responsibility, not anyone else's.

In the meantime, you can only do what you can to limit his
damage, perhaps by taking away his children or banishing his
addiction to a grungy glass booth in the airport. You can
make options for treatment available to him, and you can
make it clear that you are ready to help when he is ready to
change. After that, you can only step out of his way and let
him do what he is going to do.

“This seems extremely bias. some people really do drink to try and wash away their problems. You're saying that they're just saying that so they can drink, but that's not always true.”
—the man 3/6/07 (rating=1)

“I thought Otis was acting drunk just to get a free place to sleep.”
—Karen 6/26/07 (rating=3)

“"No matter how depraved an individual may be, they just aren't going to do something this stupid when they're not high." - this implies drugs, not people, are to blame for their actions.”
—watch you 8/10/07 (rating=1)

“You really don't have any concept about addiction do you? You sound like the type of person that would have everyone act the way YOU want them too. Get a life and leave others to do what they will.”
—Rusko 8/20/07 (rating=1)

“why all the 'He', 'His' and 'Him'? females are also affected by addiction as you must know, and your concious OR subconcious lack of acknowledgement in this makes me wonder - Why the hell did i bother to keep reading this?”
—human 7/7/09 (rating=2) ... Response from
Webmaster: "He/him" is a stylistic choice. Better than "they/them" or "he or she".

“Im using some of their facts for my school project (:”
—Kenzie 6/2/10 (rating=5)